|
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Back Issues
Articles
Recipes
Products
Retailers
Resources
Events
Letters
Advertise
Contact
Customer Service
|
|
What's Wrong With Our Baby?
By Debbie Duncan
During the winter of 1992, while much of the world watched the Olympic games on television, my husband and I were busy watching our baby come back to life. Molly's symptoms had baffled her doctors (more than 50 of them, many at a major university hospital), since mid-November. Why would an active and cheerful 17-month-old suddenly stop eating? Why would she stop walking and playing? When nothing showed up after three days of round-the-clock testing in December, we were sent home with instructions to pop a bottle of milk in Molly's mouth first thing in the morning instead of breast-feeding her, to give her vitamins and not pick her up as much. Was this meager advice the best modern medicine could do?
Doctors' advice notwithstanding, I held her during the holidays as she continued to waste away. What was even more disconcerting was her behavior: she wanted nothing to do with toys, books, Christmas or her two older sisters. "No!" she yelled whenever they came close.
On December 31, our pediatrician called at 7:30 a.m. She had been worried about Molly after seeing her the previous day and had returned to the hospital to review the chart. One of the brain scans turned out to be cause for concern; she wanted us to see a neurologist in a nearby city as soon as possible to check for a brain disorder.
"Molly's brain isn't the source of the problem," the neurologist announced 58 long and sleepless hours later. "She's obviously very ill, but she does not have a brain disease." My husband and I were positively giddy driving home that night. Molly wasn't going to die! Then we remembered we still had a sick kid on our hands, one who couldn't even hold her head up in the car seat.
Not knowing what was ailing my child had to be the most frustrating experience in my life. Doctors, too, were clearly uncomfortable about being unable to come up with a diagnosis for a 1-year-old who in two months had dropped from 23 to 18 pounds and lost all her body fat. Not that they didn't try. Because Molly was so sick for so long, she continued to be poked and prodded, sedated, sliced and scanned in order to look for what I started calling the "disease of the week." Different specialists took turns chasing every possible lead - leukemia, chronic mononucleosis, neuroblastoma (another childhood cancer), infant botulism, neuromuscular diseases (like muscular dystrophy), cystic fibrosis, heart disease and any number of debilitating genetic disorders. While drawing her blood one Monday, our pe diatri cian asked, "Should we add HIV to the list?" "Why not?" I replied over my baby's screams. I was numb. There were weeks when I actually wished Molly had cancer, just so she'd be able to begin treatment.
This is an excerpt from our Premiere 1998 issue.
For more articles like this one, click here and purchase issues of Living Without Magazine.
|
|
